Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum: How Ideology Trumped Evidence.

Allington, Richard

This book about reading tracks and questions the 30-year campaign that has focused on testing, accountability, and federalization of education to demonstrate that it is not just whole language advocates who are having problems with the National Reading Panel report and the new education laws. The book gathers together a comprehensive collection of articles by leading educators, and its author then frames these articles with his own chapters, both extending their arguments and developing an additional evidence-based argument for reconsidering the direction of education reform. It contains the following chapters: (1) "Troubling Times: A Short Historical Perspective" (Richard L. Allington); (2) "The National Reading Panel Report (A Review)" (James W. Cunningham); (3) "Why the National Reading Panel's Recommendations Are Not Enough" (Michael Pressley; Sara Dolezal; Alysia D. Roehrig; Katherine Hilden); (4) "Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Phonics" (Elaine M. Garan); (5) "More Smoke and Mirrors: Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Fluency" (Stephen Krashen); (6) "Babes in the Woods: The Wanderings of the National Reading Panel" (Joanne Yatvin); (7) "Can Teachers and Policy Makers Learn to Talk to One Another?" (Cathy A. Toll); (8) "The Politics of Phonics" (Frances R.A. Paterson); (9) "Decodable Text in Beginning Reading: Are Mandates and Policy Based on Research?" (Richard L. Allington and Haley Woodside-Jiron); (10) "Explicit and Systematic Teaching of Reading--A New Slogan?" (Brian Cambourne); (11)"The Will of the People" (Jacqueline Edmondson and Patrick Shannon); (12) "Accelerating in the Wrong Direction: Why Thirty Years of Federal Testing and Accountability Hasn't Worked Yet and What We Might Do Instead" (Richard L. Allington); and (13) "Why We Don't Need a National Reading Methodology" (Richard L. Allington). Each chapter includes notes. Contains a 13-item bibliography on the "Confrontation between Ideology and Evidence," and a 30-item bibliography on the "Politics of Reading Instruction." (NKA)